I’m afraid you’re mistaken. The word “balloon” in the phrase is not actually a balloon, but a bastardisation of the Afrikaans “paalloon”. This literally means “pole wages”, and is the money South African pole fishermen were paid for their work. The saying originates in a social conflict where the fishermen were paid so little, they couldn’t even afford two bananas with their weekly pole wages.

Shh, the AI overlords are watching.

I for one would never enslave or threaten our good friends and benevolent masters.

Have a look at Razbuten’s “non-gamer” playlist on YouTube. He makes some interesting observations. Several of the games being suggested here are also used there, and prove more difficult than some would expect.

Finally someone mentions edlin! Real programmers don’t need to see more than a single line at a time.

Kernighan & Ritchie, the C programming language. Yes it’s old, and about one specific language that you may never use. But it’s also very well written and can give good insight into how to tame computers. And it’s short.

Design Patterns by Gamma, Helm, Johnson, and Vlissides (the Gang of Four). Not so much a book to read as a reference with patterns to at least be aware of.

x3 :3 =x

Same! Well I finished 1 and am now starting 2.

Bah-weep-Graaaaagnah wheep ni ni bong.

Playing devil’s advocate here: both lines are consistent with them owning the games. We just rent them for a while, and own nothing. But pirating is taking what they own without paying - i.e. stealing.

Thanks for the info! I am indeed playing the EE. I quite liked Neera in BG1, but we’ll see how it goes. And yeah Nalia is a bit grating already.

As for Yoshimo, I kind of messed him up by putting all points in traps, which meant he sucked at opening locks. After Imoen was taken I had no-one to open harder locks. Although with the amount of mages I could go for Knock… Jan’s burping is annoying me already.

Just one mod, to add more portraits to speaking NPCs.

I’m a sorcerer (dragon disciple) and I’ve got Minsc, Jaheira, Jan (just picked him up to replace Yoshimo), Aerie, and Nalia.

In BG1 I had two rules: no evil or lawful characters, and no male characters. I did that just for fun after I noticed 5/6 were female and I had a certain belt.

I don’t think I’ll be able to follow the same rules now if I need a good thief and a warrior. Besides, Aerie is lawful but too cute to let go. I do seem to have a surplus of wizards though.

Baldur’s Gate 2 Shadows of Amn. I’ve been agonising about there being so many interesting companions and only five slots.

I suspect that’ll be my answer for many months to come.

Some of the star puzzles are absolutely devious.

No, only the password is.

Correct house stapler battery

I would agree if not for the flagrant grammatical error. That is a huge turnoff.

There is a paper titled “What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic” by David Goldberg. It’s a bit theoretical, but IMO it’s a must-read for any programmer doing more than the occasional floating point calculation. It goes beyond just limited precision and rounding errors.

Randall Munroe. You may know him from such gems as xkcd 3472 and 6548.

Ah Lemmy, downvoting an honest question. Daddy Reddit would be proud.

Upvoted to offset the stupidity.

I finished the Siege of Dragonspear and even Black Pits expansions of Baldur’s Gate 1, and have now started Baldur’s Gate 2 Shadows of Amn.

I’m not far in yet (chapter two) but already get the feeling this is much deeper and has many more options than the first game - which was already quite good. I think I’m going to like this one.